COVID-19 at a glance:

Canada, 2021

Abstract

This quick report analyse COVID-19 data publically available on the Canadian Government webiste to better understand infections, mortality rates, vaccination and variants over the pandemic. The goal of this report is to deomstrate an analysis pipeline can be outputed as a report, ready to share to colleagues and simplify communcaiton of results

Background

The first cases of COVID-19, an infection caused by SARS-CoV-2, was first discovered in 2019, and quickly spread across the globe. Since the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 has stressed healthcare systems, leading to the implementation of various public health measures and vaccination programs. In 2021, researchers and clinicians began to discover increased rates of infeection and mortality being caused by specific strains of COVID-19. These variants, named variants of concern (VOCs), include Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omicron.

This report will use publically available data downloaded from the government of Canada website to better understand key trends of COVID-19 during 2021. In doing so, this report will create informative tables and figures for infections, mortality, and vaccination by province.

Methods

Setting

This report uses data from Canada in 2021. The report takes the data stratified by province.

Data

The data used in this analysis is publically available and can be found at the Canadian Government webiste. Variables The variables of interest are infections, mortality and vaccination.

Analysis

This report was conducted using r using packages from the tidyverse. Descriptive characteristics of each metric, stratified by province.

Results

Infections by VOC

Figure 1. Infections and variants in 2021

Mortality rates

The section below uses the package canmap to plot the map of rates by province

Figure 3. Map of mortality rates

Vaccination

The vaccination program in Canada began in early 2021. The vaccination strategy differed from province to province, with some provinces giving second vaccinations 2 weeks after the first, while other province aimed to get the majority of the province partially vaccinated before the second dose. A wide range of vaccinations were used in Canada, including Johnson and Johnson, ….

As can be seen by figure X, within the first 6 months of the vaccination program, about 45% of individuals were vaccinated.

Figure 4. Proportion of vaccinated